Wednesday, 5 August 2015

Motivation and mindset anchoring.

When I was at University, a
running joke was how little we’d all worked on our papers,

how late and last minute we’d
left them, and how little effort we’d put into them.

A couple of things jolted me
out of this mindset. International students I knew, from China,

India, Europe, Africa and
South America, didn’t seem to share English students’ view

that slack effort was funny
and clever. And my Dad told me that what actually happened

at his University was that
people boasted publicly about not working,

but then worked feverishly in
private. The joke was on us.

Beliefs matter; mindset
matters; work ethic matters.

Kids’ ideas about effort stem
from their mindset. The research from Carol Dweck is much acclaimed, and
rightly so. If you believe in effortless intelligence, it leads to fear of
effort and failure.

If you believe in hard work
and overcoming setbacks, this leads to success.

Mindsets change the meaning
of embarrassing mistakes, tough challenges, hurtful setbacks, negative
criticism and long slogs into opportunities. They internalise the questions:

‘What
can I learn from this? What can I do to improve for next time?’

So a vital ingredient in the
motivation mix is the belief kids bring to lessons in their minds.

Either they believe hard work
leads to success, or they don’t.

If they don’t, they’ll avoid
challenge and give up easily when failing. If they believe their intelligence
grows with practice, effort and discipline, they’ll seek challenge and persist
when failing.

The promise of the growth
mindset is that kids no longer see tough, challenging work

as longor
boring: they‘not only seek challenge, they thrive on it’…

‘Students
with the growth mindset completely took charge of their learning and
motivation.’

Perhaps the best way to
understand this is through a scenario. What would you do in this scenario?

You’ve coached a student debating team all year through practice debates.

Your team is strong and aim
to win the annual competition against other schools.

They’ve even imagined taking
the trophy home. In the event, your team starts strong

but is defeated on points.
They are devastated. How would you react as their coach?

Tell them you thought they
were best

Tell them they were robbed of
the trophy

Tell them debating isn’t that
important in the grand scheme of things

Tell them they have the
ability and will surely win next time

Tell them they didn’t deserve
to win

Now, which did you choose?

Dwek argues that choices 1-4
don’t help them improve. Instead, she recommends 5:

‘I know how you feel. It’s
disappointing to do your best but not win.

But you haven’t earned it yet.
The other teams have practiced harder.

If you really want this, it’s
something you’ll have to really work for.’

This reveals that you choose
your mindset; it’s a choice within everyone’s sphere of control.

And that brings me on to
choice architecture.

In their bookNudge,

Thaler and Sunstein make the
case for us to think about ourselves as choice architects:

‘Choice architects have
responsibility for organising the context in which people make decisions.
People’s decisions are pervasively, unavoidably and greatly influenced by the
design elements selected by choice architects.’

One of the most important
choices we are responsible for as teachers and school leaders,

is organising the context
around the decision every pupil makes on every task in every lesson:

‘do I make the effort on this, or not bother?’

One of the greatest design
tools a choice architect is understanding cognitive biases.

A comprehensive list of fifty
is available in the book,The Art of Thinking Clearly:

I’ve summarised the key
biases that teachers seem to fall into on postshereandhere.

One of the greatest cognitive
biases in pupils’ minds is status quo bias, or the default effect.

Inertia is sticky: we tend to
go with the status quo. Here’s how Thaler and Sunstein explain it:

‘Status quo biasis the preference for inertia.

Research shows that whatever
the default choice is, many people stick with it.

Teachers know students tend to
sit in the same seats in class, even without a seating plan.

‘The default option is
perceived as the normal choice; deviating from the normal choice

requires more effortful
deliberation and take on more responsibility.

These powerful forces guide the
decisions of those otherwise unsure of what to do.

‘Never underestimate the power
of inertia. That power can be harnessed’.

An excellent example is organ
donations. There’s a shortage of organ donors:

only about 40% of people opt
for it. But when asked whether people wanted to actively opt-out

of organ donation, the
take-up increased to 80%. Opt-outs as default options are powerful.

Because we have such a strong
tendency to stick with the way things are,

by changing the default
setting, you can change a lot.

Behavioural economists and
cognitive psychologists are finding how much anchoring matters. Anchoring
guides and constrains our thinking. Once your mind is hooked onto the anchor,

it’s much harder to stray
away from it.

Kahnemann inThinking Fast and Slowgives
this demonstration:

‘What if I said Gandhi was 144
when he died, then asked you, how old was Gandhi

when he died?’People’s average answer was over 100; in reality, Gandhi
died at 79.

The unreasonably high anchor
hooked them in to a higher number than was probable.

Combined, the promise of the
growth mindset with the effect of anchoring, the default option

and status quo bias could be
powerful for increasing pupil motivation in schools.

So how do we anchor the
growth mindset on challenge, effort and setbacks as the default option?

Senior leaders

Teach the message that all
our teachers and pupilschoosea growth mindset,

from the moment kids enter
school onwards; that’s ‘just the way things are done
around here’

Share mindsetstoriesof how setbacks, failures and practice
led to eventual success

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